By Stefanie Hubbs
Forget haunted mansions, corn mazes and scary movies-the best Halloween thrills are waiting in your local graveyard.
Because The Bubble staff wants you to have the very best Halloween possible, the following are profiles of the three cemeteries closest to BYU. Pick one and have fun.
Provo City Pioneer Cemetery
With tall, foreboding trees and over 27,000 graves, many of which are gothic style headstones, this 45-acre burial plot could be the setting of a Stephen King novel.
'There was one incident in the late 1800s where a beautiful young girl was buried, but she was actually alive,' said Cathy Jackson, division office assistant for Provo Cemetery. 'The father had her dug up because he wanted to see his daughter one last time, and they saw that she had wood underneath her fingernails where she had tried to get out.'
Jackson said the European practice of bell ringing could have saved the young girl who was buried alive.
When bell ringers were unable to determine if a person was dead or merely in a coma, they used to tie a string to the finger of the corpse, which connected to a bell resting above the grave. For one day after the burial, someone would wait by the bell, just in case the deceased proved to be alive by ringing it, Jackson said.
A massive black wrought-iron fence encloses the Provo Cemetery and keeps would-be vandals out after dusk.
East Lawn Memorial Hills Cemetery
Overhanging tree branches cast dark shadows over the long, winding hill that leads up to the East Lawn Memorial Hills Cemetery.
'I don''t like being here really late at night,' said Rob Andi, a caretaker for East Lawn. 'I''ve seen weird stuff and it''s scared me.'
Andi said people who visit East Lawn at night often get scared because there are no lights.
'There''s the story about the baby that keeps crying,' Andi said. 'A 7-month-old was buried here in the 1960s due to the mother''s negligence. Some of the caretakers have heard the baby''s cry.'
Andi said East Lawn is also famous for people sighting the ghost of a young woman with long black hair walking around in a white dress.
Pleasant Grove Cemetery
'People think are out here at midnight digging in a lightning storm with a pitchfork and a shovel,' said Kary Johansson, assistant sexton at Pleasant Grove Cemetery. 'And it''s not like that. We''re rarely out here at night.'
The Pleasant Grove Cemetery is smaller than the Provo or East Lawn cemeteries; only 7,000 people are buried there.
Johansson said kids from the nearby junior high school are able to turn over graves and create graffiti because the cemetery is open and not fenced.
'I haven''t seen a ghost yet,' Johansson said. 'But if I do, I''m out of here.'